


Stay

by RobotSquid



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 07:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16572419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobotSquid/pseuds/RobotSquid
Summary: Ash always knew that Eiji would keep coming back, no matter how many times he tried to send him away.





	Stay

**Author's Note:**

> This idea grabbed me after episode 18 and it clawed its way out of me in about two hours. Enjoy!

“Ash, wake up.”

            The voice floats through the haze of sleep, gently nudging away his dreams.  Ash buries his face deeper into the pillow and ignores it.  If Eiji doesn’t know better by now, he never will.

            “Come on, it’s way past noon,” Eiji insists.  Ash feels a smack on the back of his head, but he’s too tired to be angry.  He grumbles and tries to will Eiji to leave him alone.

            “You’re impossible.”  Ash is only slightly surprised when Eiji lifts him bodily from the bed and dumps him on the floor.  Ash untangles himself from the blankets and shoots his most evil glare.  There’s no real power behind it, even less so because the face staring back at him is impossible for him to hurt in even the most mundane of ways.

            Eiji, for his part, doesn’t look upset at all.  In fact, he’s smiling, wide and eager, dark eyes sparkling in the way that still makes Ash’s stomach drop with nerves.

            “You don’t have to get dressed yet if you don’t want to,” Eiji says.  “But at least come eat.  I made you breakfast.”  He walks out of the room and Ash rolls over on the floor.  He contemplates going back to sleep right there, or at the very least taking the blanket into the kitchen with him.

            In the end, he does exactly that.  He sits at the kitchen table with the blanket wrapped around his waist, trailing from the direction of his bedroom to the chair.  He picks at the food Eiji made him—the boy can’t fry an egg the right way to save his life—and tries to wake up.

            He’s barely even done before Eiji puts another plate of food in front of him.  It’s that disgusting natto stuff, and the smell alone is enough to jolt Ash into full wakefulness.

            “Thought that might work,” Eiji laughs and sits down across from him.  Ash glares, but his irritation is quickly replaced by confusion.

            “Eiji,” he says, the name heavy on his tongue as the first word he’s spoken today.  “Your hair’s dripping water all over the table.”

            “Hmm?”  Eiji reaches up to touch his bangs.  They’re soaking wet, and little beads of water fall silently into his coffee.

            Ash smiles; nothing was cuter than when Eiji opened his eyes wide like that.

            “Oh,” Eiji says with a guilty smile.  “I took a shower before you got up.  Guess I didn’t let it dry long enough.”  He gets up and heads to the bathroom for a towel.

            Ash’s smile stays as he watches him go, then he reaches over, takes Eiji’s coffee cup, and steals a sip for himself.

            Maybe it’s the caffeine that wakes him up even further, maybe it’s just his intuition.  Ash thinks back and loses his appetite for anything more.  He knows for a fact that Eiji’s hair hadn’t been wet when he woke him up.

 

“Ash, here you go.”  Eiji slides into the bench beside Ash and hands him a cup of coffee.  Ash accepts it and takes a sip; it’s just the way he likes it.  Tons of cream and almost too much sugar to even taste the bitter drink anymore.  It’s truly bizarre that Eiji could get his drink right after only a few months when the guys couldn’t remember after years.

            Ash can smell the peppermint scent from Eiji’s coffee as he drinks it.  Somehow, it got to be December without Ash really noticing.  He never cared for Christmas before, but he found himself wondering what sort of gifts Eiji might like.

            He’d buy him just about anything.

            “Do you have Christmas in Japan?” Ash asks as they watch people walk by.

            “Yeah,” Eiji replies with a smile.  He’s sitting so close to Ash that their thighs are pressed together.  Eiji feels cold.  Ash scoots a bit closer and puts his arm over Eiji’s shoulders.  He sees Eiji blush and relax into him.  “It’s a little different back home, though.”

            “What, like you don’t have Santa or something?”

            “No, we do.”  Eiji takes another sip.  “It’s more of a, like…like a romantic holiday.  Like Valentine’s.”

            Ash frowns.  “That’s weird.  You already have two Valentine’s days, don’t you?”

            “What, White Day?”

            “Yeah.”  Ash sighs.  “You guys are so needy.  I can’t afford to remember all those days.”

            “Oh no, an extra day, that must be _so_ hard,” Eiji teases.

            “Plus your birthday, and anniversaries….”  Ash lets his head fall back on the bench with a dramatic sigh.  Eiji laughs, and it’s like music.  “Why don’t I just give you everything on Christmas and call it even?”

            “You don’t have to do that.  I don’t really want anything.”

            Ash raises an eyebrow.  “You sure?  No take backs if you change your mind.”

            Eiji blushes again and reaches up to touch Ash’s hand where it lays on his shoulder.  “I just…want to stay with you, that’s all.”

            He looks up, and Ash never knew what it meant to be lost in someone’s eyes before now.  Eiji’s eyes are so dark, like expensive velvet or the night sky, and if he looks hard enough he could swear he even sees stars in them.  Before he can stop himself, Ash leans in, testing the waters.  Eiji lifts his chin, that cute blush rising and his eyes fixated sharply on Ash’s own.

            They’re nose-to-nose, breath-to-breath when Ash feels a tiny trickle of water on his face.  He blinks and draws back, then immediately wishes he hadn’t.  The look on Eiji’s face when he pulls away is unbearable.

            “Eiji,” Ash says, putting his hand on Eiji’s forehead and smoothing the hair back.  “When did your hair get wet?”

            “What?”  Eiji smiles, but there’s no life in it, and it almost looks like an apology.  “It was raining earlier.  Don’t you remember?”

            Ash looks up.  The sky is dark and grey, but there’s not even the smallest hint of a raincloud.  He looks to the sidewalks; they’re as dry as they have been this whole time.

            “What are you talking about?” Ash asks.

            Eiji doesn’t answer.

 

“You’re so fucking clumsy.  Pick up your feet when you walk, why don’t you,” Ash grumbles.  Eiji doesn’t have anything to say for himself as he holds a bunch of tissues to his bloodied forehead.  He only glares, embarrassment radiating off him as Ash picks up the shards of glass from the hardwood floor.

            “Push your chair in at the table and then maybe I won’t trip over it,” he shoots back.

            “We need to get you some glasses,” Ash says, dumping the big pieces of glass into the trash can.  He grabs the broom and begins to sweep up the smaller pieces.  “I can’t believe you tricked me into cleaning.”

            Eiji laughs.  “Is this all it takes, then?  Hand me a plate.”

            Ash shoots him a middle finger instead, which is swiftly returned, and finishes cleaning up the shattered glass.  He sits down next to Eiij and coaxes his hand away from the injury.

            “All right, let me see.”

            “I’m fine,” Eiji insists, but he humors Ash anyway.

            Ash frowns.  Eiji had only hit his head very lightly; it shouldn’t be bleeding like this.  He could swear that what was once a tiny cut was now a much bigger gash that might need stitches.  He gives Eiji a wad of fresh tissues and presses it against the injury.

            “Just be more careful,” Ash sighs.  “I don’t like it when you get hurt, okay?”  It’s a surprisingly hard thing to admit.  He isn’t sure why.

            “I don’t like to cause trouble for you,” Eiji mumbles, looking down at his lap as he keep applying pressure to the cut.  Even as Ash watches, the white tissues fill up with red at an alarming rate.

            “Hey,” he says, touching the side of Eiji’s face.  “I think you might be really hurt.  We should get you to the ER.”

            Eiji hastily shakes his head.  “No, I’m fine.  It’ll stop.”

            Blood is running in bright red trails down Eiji’s cheeks, staining his skin and coming to a point under his chin.

            “Don’t be stupid.”  The panic swells in Ash and he grabs Eiji’s upper arms, pulling him up off the couch.

            “I’m fine,” Eiji insists, and there’s a desperation in his voice that Ash doesn’t understand.  He wants to shake him until he stops talking nonsense, until he listens to Ash for once and stops doing this.

            “I’m taking you to a doctor,” Ash says with the firmest voice he can stand to use with Eiji.  “Look at you, you’re practically bleeding out!”

            “I’m not!” Eiji cries.  He throws the bloody tissues away and then it’s not just blood streaming down his face, it’s water dripping from his lovely dark bangs, pooling around his feet on the floor.

            “What the fuck!” Ash yells, releasing his hold on him and jumping back.  He looks up at Eiji, who looks more lost than Ash has ever seen him.  He can see regret in his starry-sky eyes, like he thinks Ash is somehow afraid of him.

            “Ash, please don’t make me leave,” Eiji begs, as blood and water fall in waves over his body, his skin turning sallow and his voice choked out from swollen lungs.  “Let me stay.  I’ll be careful, I’ll stop messing up, just please…please….”

            The word _please_ echoes in Ash’s mind, looping endlessly until he closes his eyes and wills the whole world to go dark.

 

Ash wakes up with the sun the next morning.  He’s never done so in his whole life, and he lays there, staring out at the gray sky as raindrops roll down the window.  Something warm moves against him; he looks to the body curled up under his arm.  It’s Eiji, and he sleeps so soundly one would never guess he was in bed with a murderer.

            Ash feels his heart ripped into five hundred different pieces as he puts his hand on Eiji’s head and leans down to kiss him.  Eiji should have everything.  He should be happy with someone that wasn’t like Ash at all, somebody who would give him anything he wanted for the rest of his life.  Ash wants to take all of Eiji’s pain and gather it up into himself and let the hurt be his, just so Eiji could rest.  He deserves that much, after all of this.

            Ash lays his lips on Eiji’s forehead and just leaves them there, feeling the warmth of his skin flowing into his lips.  He breathes in deep.  He wants to take everything about the boy into his own soul, and maybe that would be enough to protect him.

            Eiji stirs, opens his eyes, and blinks at him.  Ash smiles weakly, his eyes filling with unbidden tears.  There’s a leak in the ceiling, dripping rainwater down onto Eiji’s hair.

            “Ash?” Eiji asks quietly.

            Ash shakes his head and strokes Eiji’s face.  “You can’t keep doing this, Eiji.”

            There’s a long pause.  “I can’t stay?”

            It’s the hardest thing in the world to look into his eyes and tell him:  “No, sweetheart.  You can’t.”

            Eiji purses his lips together and Ash watches them tremble, and he watches the tiny tears spill from Eiji’s eyes.  Eiji breaks free from Ash’s arms, turns over in bed, and disappears.

            Ash stays in bed, alone, for the rest of the day.

 

It’s two days before Eiji comes back again.  He’s sitting on the couch, staring down at the floor.  He’s soaking wet.  Ash walks in from his bedroom and feels strangely hollow when he sees him.  It’s not that he feels nothing:  it’s that if he let himself feel anything, he’d never be able to do this.  He’d let Eiji go through with it and never forgive himself for the rest of their eternity together.

            They don’t say anything to each other for a while.  Ash goes to the kitchen and makes Eiji a cup of coffee with peppermint creamer.  When he hands it to Eiji, Eiji takes a small sip but then sets it aside, like it was only a courtesy.

            Ash sits next to him and motions for Eiji to come to him.  Eiji crawls into Ash’s arms, buries his face in his white T-shirt, and holds him so tight it’s like he wants to dissolve straight into him.

            “Eiji…” Ash asks, running his hands through the soft, damp locks of Eiji’s hair.  “I don’t want you to come back like this.”

            “I’m sorry,” Eiji says, his voice ragged.  “You must think I’m so weak.  You must hate me.”

            “No, no, never,” Ash tells him.  He lifts Eiji’s face by his chin and presses a sure, unsteady kiss to his lips.  It’s one of the scariest things he does, kissing a boy he doesn’t deserve, but he’d do just about anything to show him that there’s nothing so impossible, so inconceivable, so unholy as the idea that Ash could ever possibly hate him.

            “I just miss you so bad,” Eiji continues.  “It’s been years, and it doesn’t stop hurting.”

            “I know, sweetheart.”  Ash rubs a tear away with his thumb.  “It doesn’t.”

            “I can’t wait any longer.  I want to be with you now.”

            “What have you been doing?  Putting rocks in your pocket or something?”

            “No.”  Eiji shakes his head and looks away, deeply ashamed.  “Just…the bathtub.”  He pauses.  “I fill it up and I lay down.”

            “Promise me you’ll stop that.”  He has no right to ask, he knows.  Even though it’s him Eiji is mourning, Ash feels like it’s not his place to tell him anything.  It’s not his place to tell Eiji to stay in the mire of grief, possessive and demanding and unforgiving.  He doesn’t want to leave Eiji there.  But there’s no other choice.

            When Eiji doesn’t answer, Ash says again, “Eiji.  Promise me.”

            “Just let me stay.”  Eiji’s never sounded so broken.  It’s like watching the sun limp across the sky, desperate to just lay down and let its colors bleed everywhere for the final time.  “You let me stay back then.”

            “You have things to do,” Ash tells him.  “Everyone would miss you.  You don’t really want to leave Ibe-san and Sing, or your family, your cute little sister?”  He runs his hand through Eiji’s hair again.  “You don’t want them to feel the way you do now, do you?”

            “I don’t want to leave,” Eiji insists, and Ash worries for the first time that he might not be able to fix this.  “You always said that if you sent me away I’d just come back.”

            “And you _will_ come back,” Ash says, taking Eiji’s face in his own hands.  Tears and water spill over his fingers.  He wills his voice to remain steady.  If he breaks even a tiny bit, he knows that the temptation will take him too.  But Eiji can’t kill himself.  He can’t.  It would be Ash’s fault, and he never once in his life wanted Eiji to die because of him.

            “You will come back,” Ash says again.  “Just not now, okay, sweetheart?”

            Eiji’s face crumples and he begins to sob, pitching forward into Ash’s arms.  Ash hugs him tightly, soaking in every tear, every sob, every shake of Eiji’s body.  He picks them all up, every little last broken piece, and throws them away so they can’t hurt Eiji ever again.  He doesn’t know how long Eiji has been carrying this, but Ash is glad that he can at least do this for him.

            It could have been hours or days that they sit there.  Ash pets the back of Eiji’s head, murmuring over and over, _it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m sorry, I’ll always be with you._

            It ends when Eiji can’t muster any more energy to move a single muscle.  Slowly, his motions fade, his sobs grow quiet, and he sinks into Ash’s arms, a formless shell of weariness.  Ash coaxes his head up again and he can’t help but smile.  Eiji’s eyes are red, his whole face streaked with tears and mucus, but God is he beautiful.  Ash would do everything over again for him.  He wouldn’t change a single thing.

            “I’ll go,” Eiji concedes, and his voice is so cracked it doesn’t sound like him anymore.  But despite that, there’s a lightness to it that wasn’t there before.

            “You’ll be back,” Ash assures him.  “And I’ll be here waiting for you.”

            Eiji nods.  He rubs at his eyes, still trickling tears.

            “I got you a present, you know,” Ash says with a grin.

            Eiji smiles weakly.  “What is it?”

            “Well, how about this.  You can have it when you get back, okay?  I need some time to get the place ready for you.”

            “You’re gonna clean?”  Eiji laughs, a bit of sunlight shining through.

            “Yeah,” Ash sighs, trying his best to look put out about it.  He gets to his feet and holds out his hand.  “I’ll walk you out.”

            Eiji’s face falls again, but he takes Ash’s hand nonetheless.  Ash pulls him close, hugging him tight, and kisses him again.

            “I want you to remember one thing always,” Ash says.  “You’re always gonna be Eiji to me no matter what happens.  I don’t really know what it means to love someone, but I think if I had to guess, the way I feel with you is pretty damn close.”

            He pauses, wondering why he never told Eiji that when they were alive.  He wonders if it would have changed anything.

            Eiji smiles.  Ash doesn’t know how long it will be until he sees that smile again, but he’ll wait as long as it takes.  “Yeah,” he says.  “I know.  And you know too, right?”

            Ash nods.  He could lie to himself about a lot of things, but there was no denying that Eiji had always been surer of his feelings than Ash had.

            They walk out to the elevator, and Eiji holds Ash’s hand like he’s terrified.  Ash raises the hand to his lips and kisses it.

            “I’ll come get you when it’s time, okay?” he says.  “I promise.  I’ll be right there the second you can come home.”

            “Okay.”  Some of Eiji’s trembling stills and he forces another smile.  It takes all of their combined strength to let go of each other’s hands as Eiji walks into the elevator.

            The doors close and Ash waves with a small smile.  “See you soon, sweetheart.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, please let me know what you thought with a comment or come scream at me on my [twitter](http://twitter.com/frozencalamari/)!


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